Latino Daily News

Colombian Prostitute At Center of Secret Service Scandal to Launch Foundation

The erstwhile call girl whose dispute with a U.S. Secret Service agent at April’s Summit of the Americas in Colombia sparked a scandal will use some of the earnings generated by her notoriety to establish a foundation serving women who want to get out of prostitution, her legal representatives said.

Dania Londoño, a 25-year-old single mother, went public early last month with her account of the incident in Cartagena, which happened before U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Cartagena for the hemispheric conference.

“The foundation will be based in Bogota, but it could operate anywhere and Dania will funnel to it part (of the money) she receives and has received” for the rights to her story, a source at the law firm De la Espriella Lawyers Enterprise Consultorias y Servicios Legales Especializados told Efe.

Londoño has signed contracts with a magazine, a publisher and a television production company that plans a series on her life, but rejected a $500,000 offer to star in a porn film, “precisely because she has initiated a new life,” the source said.

The foundation will offer training and job opportunities to women who want to get out of prostitution, which is legal in Colombia.

“They will also receive psychological and medical advice,” the source said. “It will be a complete process.”

Twelve Secret Service agents sent to Cartagena ahead of Obama’s arrival were implicated in the scandal and nine of them have been dismissed for hiring prostitutes.

Londoño said she and several companions met the men at a bar and she eventually agreed to have sex with one of them for $800.

She said he took her to the Hotel Caribe, where he was staying with other U.S. Secret Service agents, and that she was still there the following morning when a call came in from the front desk informing her she needed to leave the hotel immediately.

Londoño said she woke the man up and asked for the money but that he insulted her and only offered to pay 50,000 pesos (around $28), after which she sought help from another American - also a Secret Service agent - in a nearby room and then from a policeman.

Finally, several Secret Service agents came up with $250 to pay Londoño and she left after nearly four hours of uproar.